Annette Bening stars as the sadly forgotten Hollywood bad girl, Gloria Grahame, an actress whose assertive sensuality lit up the screen in such memorable films as It's a Wonderful Life, The Big Heat, and The Bad and the Beautiful, for which she took home a deserved supporting-actress Oscar. Nobody looks like Gloria Grahame — least of all the actress playing her — and all of the makeup wizards and digital scalpels that Bening can avail herself of can’t change that fact. The actress knows it, and instead of piling on pounds of lipstick to accentuate a pout she doesn’t have or studying hours of footage to achieve the right vocal affectation (see: Ray, Beyond the Sea, Hitchcock, The Disaster Artist, etc.), there are moments where Bening takes you inside the actresses’ head that go far beyond mere mimicry. As her last lover, Jamie Bell nails all of the psychological pitfalls surrounding his dating a dying movie star that’s twice his age. Given the strength of his cast, director Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin, Victor Frankenstein) had little more to do that point the camera and call “Action!” Those with strong stomachs might want to consider watching this on a double-bill with Wim Wenders’ Lightning Over Water. (2017) — Scott Marks
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